British GQ May 2022

SHARIF HAMZA Photographer Hamza is a London-born, New York-based photographer. For this May issue, he photographed Oscar-winning actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. “I asked him to perform to an audience on stage,” Hamza says. “He gave a performance so passionate it came across as aggressive in the images, so to tone it down, I changed it to an audience of children who he was reassuring that there was no danger from a monster.” Office Grails DANIEL BORRÁS Head of editorial content, GQ Spain “Helmut Lang knew that my office laptop would fit perfectly in his vintage carrier bag.” YUNA NISHIKIORI Social media manager, GQ Japan “Just here to praise these comfy Andfamilys overalls.” SELMAN FAZIL Style editor, GQ India “Instead of an undereye concealer, I go for these chunky Bottega Veneta glasses.”…

WHEN WE MOVED BACK TO LONDON LAST JULY, the streets were whisper quiet. My partner, cat and I pulled up to a temporary apartment on St. John Street, Clerkenwell. We had just relocated our lives and worldly possessions to a new continent, mid-pandemic. Clerkenwell was our first taste of freedom after 11 nights in a quarantine hotel. And it was dead quiet – even the sad little Pret was closed. In hindsight, it was the result of literal months of fatigue, paperwork and bureaucracy – digging through a decade’s worth of travel records for our new visas, filling out a form with literally every item we’d be bringing into England, down to the jumper – but somehow, we’d got it into our heads that London wasn’t much fun anymore. Maybe it…

Meet a Whole New Malcolm McLaren THOMAS BRODIE-SANGSTER is strolling through London’s Hyde TPark wearing a pale trilby, corduroy flares, and his great-grandfather’s 100-year-old overcoat. As you might have gleaned from his roles in period pieces such as The Queen’s Gambit, and Danny Boyle’s new Sex Pistols drama, Pistol, the 31-year-old actor has an affinity for the past. “There are stories in this coat,” he says, gloved hands clasped behind his back like a reserved school master. “And I do enjoy dressing up.” The days when Brodie-Sangster was known simply as the lovelorn, drumkit-lashing kid in 2003’s Love Actually are ancient history. Lately he’s been notching up a swathe of prestige TV roles, from Game of Thrones to his Emmy-nominated spell in the hit Netflix chess drama. As Danny Boyle, his Pistol…

3.1 PHILLIP LIM, TELFAR, MARNI, GIVENCHY, ASHYA, AND PAUL SMITH: PROP ST YLIST, MELODIE DEWIT T AT CREATIVE SPACE ARTISTS MGMT. MARYAM NASSIR Z ADEH, HERMÈS, SALVATORE FERRAGAMO, AND GUCCI: PROP ST YLIST, SHARON RYAN AT HALLEY RESOURCES. THOM BROWNE, CHANEL, ISSEY MIYAKE, THE ROW, BODE, COMMISSION, MONCLER, AND LEMAIRE: PROP ST YLIST, MELODIE DEWIT T AT CREATIVE SPACE ARTISTS MGMT. MAISON MARGIEL A, DRIES VAN NOTEN, AND BALENCIAGA: PROP ST YLIST, SHARON RYAN AT HALLEY RESOURCES.…

WHEN HIMESH PATEL was a child, he pretended to be an American called Mike. It was one of those inexplicable impulses children have to test the limits of what they can get away with, like faking a girlfriend, or convincing someone Paul Rudd is your distant uncle. “The stuff I was consuming at the time was American kids being all cool,” he says now. “I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s what I want to do.’” By the time his family moved to another town, no one had caught him out. It’s something Patel still thinks about sometimes today as he navigates Hollywood, an industry that notoriously keeps its gates hermetically sealed. Did they really convince them, or were they just indulging him? Was he really being accepted? Just recently, Patel, 31, found…

ONE OF THE most beautiful new watches to emerge this spring doesn’t actually look very new at all. It’s the Patek Philippe reference 5172G-010, a white-gold, hand-wound chronograph with a gorgeous salmon dial. It’s a fresh model that borrows some of Patek’s most venerated design moves. In fact, when I first saw the watch, I thought I knew it already. The new 5172G almost teases the wearer with a sense of déjà vu: the protruding “box” crystal, syringe hands, and stepped bezel and lugs look ripped from the pages of vintage Patek catalogues. As Patek Philippe president Thierry Stern explains, “It looks like it is from the past, but it is made for the present,” underscoring the push at the company to update its iconic design history for a new…